by Laura Dower
Madison, Fiona, Aimee, and Lindsay could hardly catch their breath inside Bloomingdale’s; there was so much to see and so much to buy. Madison recalled what she had told Mom when she first got permission to come on the weekend trip. She’d promised not to spend a lot of money shopping. But this store made her want to change all of that. She wanted to shop, shop, shop—yes, until she dropped.
Aimee was infatuated with the mirrors that seemed to be everywhere on the walls of the store’s interior. She could hardly walk a few steps without turning to look at her reflection or without pausing to try a new dance step.
“Show-off,” Madison joked as they walked along.
Lindsay chuckled.
“Hold on!” Aunt Mimi held her hands out as though she were stopping traffic. “Brainstorm. I just got another idea.”
She dragged all four girls over to a long counter in the beauty department. A large, older woman wearing a white smock greeted Aunt Mimi with a kiss on both cheeks.
“We were just in the neighborhood, Hilde. And we’ve got a few gals here who need to look pretty as a picture today,” Aunt Mimi said, rubbing her gloved hands together. “Can you help?”
“Hello, girls!” the woman said. She coughed and eyeballed them. “Oh, these are all such pretty ones, Mimi.”
The woman’s accent sounded Russian, Madison thought, although she really didn’t know the difference between one foreign accent and the next. Aunt Mimi bragged that Hilde was the best makeup artist in all of New York City. Madison wasn’t sure that was true, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that today someone—anyone—was going to make Madison, Aimee, Fiona, and Lindsay up.
The four friends squealed with delight.
Aimee hopped up into the makeover chair first. Hilde pulled Aimee’s blond hair back using some hair clips and applied a light dusting of powder, some pale pink shadow, and lipstick. After Aimee was done, Fiona sat in the chair, and then Lindsay, and finally Madison. Hilde gave Madison extra-special treatment, pulling her hair into some kind of cool twist—a cross between a French braid and a slipknot.
Aunt Mimi waved her arms around like a proud peacock once Hilde had finished, cooing at the girls. After that, they all moved through the rest of Bloomingdale’s feeling like cover girls. Now the four were stopping to glance at their reflections on the walls; even Lindsay, who normally detested mirrors, looked.
“We look good, don’t we?” Madison asked.
“Yeah,” Aimee said. “Too bad Ivy isn’t here so we could show her and her dumb drones up.”
“This is the best day ever,” Fiona gushed. She moved her head back and forth, and the beads on her braids clinked.
“This is definitely the best birthday I ever had,” Lindsay said. “And I was going to stay home in my pajamas? Thanks for rescuing me.”
Madison took Lindsay’s arm and swung it in time with her own.
“Here we go!” Aunt Mimi cried as the row of glass doors appeared before them. They’d reached the opposite side of the store, on Third Avenue. Now it was only a few blocks more, Aunt Mimi said, until they had lunch.
Serendipity, the restaurant with the Frrrozen hot chocolate, had a line out the door into the street. People had their scarves and coats pulled around them tightly to protect them from the wind. The East River was only a block or so away, and the gusts of air off the water could get very cold at times.
Although the line seemed long at first, it really wasn’t—at least not with Aunt Mimi leading the way. She waltzed right up to the hostess, who promptly led the girls and Aunt Mimi to one of the best tables in the place. There, they were presented with the hugest menus Madison had ever seen.
They noshed on sandwiches, sweet-potato fries, and fruit salad before getting to the main course, or at least the main reason they were there. Aunt Mimi ordered.
“Decaf for me and two Frrrozen hot chocolates for the troops,” she told the waiter.
When the drinks arrived, in widemouthed glasses teeming with thick whipped cream and chocolate shavings, Madison thought she would pass out. They needed to pair up and share. Aimee and Fiona quickly scooped out a taste from one glass. Then Lindsay handed Madison a straw.
“Shall we?” Lindsay said smiling, armed with a long straw of her own.
Aunt Mimi pulled her small digital camera from her bag and asked the girls to pose.
“Smile, friends!” Aunt Mimi said.
Madison couldn’t believe that a single day could be so perfect. She’d nearly forgotten everything about her boring existence back in Far Hills.
Well, almost.
In the back of her mind, as she sat there with icy lips sharing the cold, delicious drink with Lindsay, Madison wondered what it would be like to sip one of Serendipity’s Frrrozen hot chocolates with a certain someone else—a certain someone named Hart Jones.
What would a Frrrozen hot chocolate kiss taste like?
Chapter 9
AFTER ELBOWING THEIR WAY back through the line outside Serendipity, Aunt Mimi and the girls walked uptown about ten blocks. Then they headed west toward Central Park.
“Where to now?” Lindsay asked. She seemed to have forgotten all about her dad and the question of whether he would call her. Her whole mood had lifted, even though her feet were a little tired.
“Well, I thought we’d make a trip across the park to the American Museum of Natural History. The planetarium has a new show. But first, first, we have a special stop for Madison,” Aunt Mimi said. She rubbed her hands together and grinned.
Madison smiled. “A special stop for me?”
Aunt Mimi nodded.
“No secrets! What is it?” Fiona asked excitedly. “Is it some cool computer tech store?”
Aunt Mimi shook her head.
“A pet store with pugs like Phinnie?” Lindsay guessed.
“Nope,” Aunt Mimi said. “Let’s go-go!”
Everyone hustled along the sidewalk for several more blocks, following neatly behind Aunt Mimi until she stopped at a certain corner.
“Ah, we’ve arrived,” Aunt Mimi said, extending her hands.
They stood there as the traffic whizzed past. A bus beeped its horn, and a couple of pigeons flapped above their heads from their perch on a storefront ledge.
Madison shrugged. “Um…Aunt Mimi, I’m sorry, but I don’t get it.”
Aunt Mimi smiled. “Look around.”
“Oh!” Aimee started to laugh. “I get it!” she yelled. Aimee pointed up to the street sign.
“Madison Avenue!” Lindsay said aloud. She grabbed Madison in a huge hug. “Aunt Mimi, you have to take a picture right now.”
“Pictures!” Aunt Mimi gasped. “That sounds like a perfectly yummy idea.” She retrieved her digital camera and pointed it at the girls. “Closer; get closer…” she said.
“Aunt Mimi, we couldn’t be any closer!” Lindsay cried.
Everyone laughed out loud.
The smell of pretzels wafted in the air and Madison breathed deeply. She remembered when her parents had taken her to the city to see the Big Apple Circus for the first time. They’d driven down Madison Avenue and pointed out all of the colorful shops before turning in to the park. It seemed like only yesterday, but it was already half of her life ago.
“Aunt Mimi, are we going shopping again?” Lindsay asked, sounding slightly disappointed. “It’s not that I don’t want to shop, but it’s almost two-something and we should probably go to the museum if we’re going to go, right? I mean…I don’t know what everyone else would like to see, but I would like to see the light show. I mean…if no one else minds…”
“Mind? Of course we don’t mind!” Fiona declared.
“Of course,” Madison agreed.
“Hey, it’s your birthday,” Aimee said. “Your rules.”
“Indeedy,” Aunt Mimi said with a deferential bow of her head. “As the birthday girl wishes. Let’s hoof it to the park entrance. We can take a bus across and get to the planetarium—pronto.”
The bus on
ly took ten minutes, and then they were standing in front of the all-glass Rose Planetarium on the corner of Eighty-first Street and Central Park West. Already the day had turned into a citywide exploration—and Lindsay was loving every minute. She grabbed Madison’s wrist and pulled her up the steps to the door of the planetarium.
Madison laughed to herself. She knew this was more the kind of place her BFF liked. Lindsay was game for fashion makeovers, but what mattered a lot more to her was the chance to learn something new. She was always sort of studying. Of course, it wasn’t studying for the test coming up on Monday, but it was the next best thing.
Lindsay’s eyes opened wide when they stepped into the planetarium. Above their heads Madison saw the suspended sculptures of planets and moons hovering from barely visible wires.
“This is…awesome,” Fiona said as she walked inside.
Chatterbox Aimee was speechless. No opinions, just stares. She looked up at the enormous sphere overhead that was supposed to be the sun. Her jaw dropped.
Aunt Mimi shuffled off to the ticket booth and got their tickets for a new exhibit called “Are We Alone in the Galaxy?” They lucked out and didn’t have to wait in a very long line to get inside. After only half an hour they were sitting in a row in the semidarkness along with hundreds of other kids, parents, and tourists speaking languages like French, Japanese, and Farsi.
The ceiling of the planetarium theater was shaped like a bubble, a dark, curved, painted sky with bumps and shapes. It reminded Madison of the main room at Grand Central Station. Everywhere they had gone in New York so far, the sky and stars had watched over them, taking good care of Madison and friends.
The seats in the auditorium reclined so that visitors could lean back and survey the sky from a nearly prone position. After all the makeovers, the hot chocolate, and the walking around the city, Madison and her friends were relieved to lie down.
“I think I could fall asleep right here,” Fiona said with a little yawn.
“No, you won’t,” Aimee said softly. She motioned down a few rows. “Not with those cute boys ahead of us,” she said.
Fiona sat back up. “Huh? Who?”
“They’re not that cute,” Madison said.
Lindsay didn’t make any comment. She pushed her chair back and closed her eyes. After a moment, Madison tapped Lindsay’s shoulder.
“Are you okay?” Madison asked.
Lindsay blinked. Madison could see that her eyes were wet.
“Are you crying?” Madison whispered. No one else could hear. Aimee and Fiona were too busy talking about the boys, who had now noticed them, too.
Lindsay didn’t care about any of that. “I’m not crying,” she sniffled to Madison. “Well, I am, but just a little. I was just thinking of Dad.”
“What about him?” Madison asked.
“He never takes me places like this,” she said.
“Lindsay,” Madison whispered. “You have to stop worrying.”
Lindsay frowned. “Sometimes my dad makes me feel like I’m the jerk.”
Madison raised an eyebrow. “But you’re not,” she said. “Remember?”
All at once, a voice boomed through the loudspeaker: Please refrain from taking photographs during the show. There are safety lights in the aisles if you need to exit the auditorium…
As the announcements continued, the lights went off, except for one teeny-tiny spotlight in a corner of the ceiling.
Aimee giggled, which made Fiona giggle. Madison was sure Aunt Mimi would lean over and say, “Shhh!” Instead, she giggled, too. They weren’t the only ones. An entire school group had a case of the giggles on the other side of the room.
Then a different recorded voice began to speak. The sound echoed in the cold room. Why was it so cold all of a sudden? Madison wondered. Except for the whispering and laughter all around them, it felt as if they could be lying on a blanket out in the middle of some real field watching a real sky. Maybe the cold was all in her head, Madison thought.
The ceiling became a video-projection screen with images of the sky quickly turning to pictures of dark, deep water, as if the people in the audience were diving into the sea. The narrator described life way down in the furthest depths of the ocean. Even in that cold darkness, where the water pressure was so intense, creatures lived. The screen showed tube worms, clams, and microbes.
Lindsay wasn’t crying anymore. She was listening intently. Madison was happy to see her friend cheered up by what she heard.
After a few more moments underwater, the screen shifted again to the skies. It showed space, stars, and planets.
At one point, the giant projector showed the glowing image of a large moon. It was Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter. Madison leaned back as far as she could in the chair. She tried to imagine what it would be like to fly into space, to soar above the earth in a rocket, to venture to the edges of the universe.
Sometimes, she thought, life felt that foreign to her. It seemed as if she were always investigating or exploring or at least just trying to figure stuff out. And just when she believed that she’d finally (finally!) reached some new frontier, like getting a real date with Hart, something strange would happen to throw her off course. Was that the way the universe was supposed to work?
The stars flashed overhead while music played soft and low. Out of the corner of one eye Madison spotted Lindsay with her own eyes fixed on the ceiling. She was feeling better, fortunately. Her moments of being upset never seemed to last long. They were just coming more frequently now, since she’d confided in everyone about her father.
“You should make a wish,” Madison whispered.
“Huh?”
“There are a million stars glittering up there,” Madison said. “Make a wish on one of them.”
“You’re right,” Lindsay said.
Madison made her own wish. She wished that Lindsay would have a good birthday—and that her dad would show up. She figured that if she made the same exact wish that she knew her friend was making it would have twice as much chance of coming true.
When the lights came back up again, Aimee and Fiona were still stifling a few giggles. Aimee pointed to the boys a few rows up, the same ones they had been checking out before the show.
“Let’s follow them,” she suggested as a goof. But Aunt Mimi heard her and cleared her throat. “Ahem…we will do no following, ladies,” she said. It was the very first time Madison had seen—and heard—the grown-up in Lindsay’s aunt. Aunt Mimi now sounded a little more like Mom and the other mothers and less like the cool, eccentric relative one liked to show off to friends.
Aimee and Fiona, however, were not deterred.
“We’ll probably see those boys outside, anyway,” Fiona said. “We’re taking a walk on the Cosmic Pathway.”
Aunt Mimi rolled her eyes. “Let’s go, my darlings.”
“Aunt Mimi,” Lindsay said as they stood up and shimmied out of their row and into the main aisle. “Can you check your cell phone? Did Dad call you while we were in here?”
Aunt Mimi clicked her phone on, but there were no messages.
A deflated Lindsay walked off by herself. Madison hurried after her, followed by Aimee and Fiona.
As it happened, the boys from the auditorium were headed in the same direction. Aimee collided with one of them near a water fountain.
“Sorry,” said the boy, who had tousled blond hair. “I didn’t see you.”
“Yeah, right,” Lindsay whispered to Madison.
Madison laughed, and all the boys turned to look.
Fiona made a face that seemed to say, “Maddie, how could you be so embarrassing!” Madison wanted to say, “How can you be looking at some other cute guy when you supposedly like Egg, the cute guy who is one of my friends?” Of course Madison knew the answer. It didn’t matter how much you liked someone. If there was a really cute, or Cute (with a capital C) guy in the room, checking him out was a necessity.
Another one of the cute guys (there were three in al
l), sidled up to Lindsay. Madison realized that these boys were older—by at least two or maybe even three years. Aunt Mimi stood by and let the girls talk, but she had her eye on everyone the entire time.
“You guys live in New York?” a brown-haired guy with glasses asked Aimee.
Lindsay leaned into Madison again. “He looks like Hart,” she said quietly.
Madison looked him over. In her opinion, he looked nothing like her crush. But this guy was cute—little-c cute, but cute nonetheless.
“We live in New York,” Fiona answered at last. She looked over at Aunt Mimi to see if her answer was okay.
These boys were full of questions.
“Go to school in the city?” another one asked.
“Nope.” It was Aimee who answered this time.
“Are you two sisters?” a boy with really short hair, almost a crew cut, asked Madison, referring to her and Lindsay.
“Sisters?” Lindsay said. She cracked a smile.
“Practically,” Madison replied.
“You look alike,” the boy said. “Hey, you want to hang out down by the…”
Aunt Mimi took that as her cue to step in.
“Sorry, boys, we’ve got a tight schedule today. No can do,” she said abruptly, almost shooing the boys away.
They turned away, grumbling. “See you later,” the blond one said.
Aunt Mimi stood there with her hands on her hips until they had almost disappeared from view.
“Smart alecks,” she said. Then she laughed. “But they are cute.”
Lindsay shrugged. “Boys can be so annoying,” she said. “But I liked the part about us being sisters, Maddie.”
“You do look a little bit alike,” Fiona said. “I always thought that, but I never actually said it.”
“Yeah,” Aimee agreed. “You have practically the same hair.”
“And the same style,” Fiona said.
“And the same heart,” Aunt Mimi added.
“Hart? Oh, no!” Madison cried, pretending to be emotional at the mention of his name.
